The Salton Sea received a lot of pre-lease hype and enthusiasm, then came out for a week before vanishing into the video stores. In that regard, the film followed the same pattern as The Way of the Gun, another very good, very flawed examination of a violent underground that speaks to a minority of film fans.

When the detailed history of neo-noir, or post-noir or film soleil or film blanc or whatever you want to call it, is finally written, The Salton Sea, like The Way of the Gun, will loom large in that history. Visually stylish, dependably, even iconically, acted, narratively clever, with great, quotable dialogue, both films are premiere examples of their genre and are rather amazing artefacts to come out of contemporary studios.

But that is as much as I want to say about The Salton Sea, which is written by Tony Gayton (Murder by Numbers) and directed by D. J. Caruso (who is doing The Shield on TV right now). The hype failed to spoil the plot of the movie, and when I finally got a chance to seeing it, I soon learned that I was unprepared for its twists and turns. The Salton Sea, a real place, is the "Chinatown" of the film, a location symbolic of a failure of decision making.

Even saying that is too much. Suffice it to note that the film starts out to be the story of Danny Parker (a brilliant Val Kilmer). He's a heavily tattooed musician turned meth addict who lives in a permanent all-night party of tweaked crazies in a Los Angeles apartment. The film begins with a Casino-style history of meth, and then shows Danny and his buddy Jimmy the Finn (an endearing Peter Sarsgaard) going out to refuel the depleted "gak" supplies. Then…

No, that's it. The Salton Sea is better seen when thinking that it is just another portrayal of depressing drug addicts. Just note that (like the equally ignored masterpiece Heat) the film has a fantastic cast. Vincent D'Onofrio, Adam Goldberg, Doug Hutchison (the movie is produced by Frank Darabont, who cast this same actor in The Green Mile), Anthony LaPaglia, Deborah Kara Unger, Chandra West, B.D. Wong, R. Lee Ermey and Shalom Harlow. Hey, The Salton Sea is a film that stars both Luis Guzman and Danny Trejo.